Tag: Experience (Page 6 of 6)

The Unkempt Man

September 12, 2012 / Tom

A man walked into church one day. He looked haggard, tired, unkempt and his clothes were unwashed and wrinkled as if he had slept in them for days. He could not help but notice the stares of the congregation as he moved to a pew near the back of the building. He could not help but feel their disdain for him as he took his seat and removed his worn and battered baseball cap.

One woman seated directly in front of him whispered to her friend loudly enough to make herself heard by the man. “Have you ever seen such a sight? That man has no respect for anyone! Just look at how he came to church. I can’t believe it!” Her friend offered no reaction or judgment.

“My dear,” replied the man. “I have the utmost respect for you. In fact, I saved your life once.”

For some reason, the woman’s mind traveled back to a time when she sat alone in her bedroom with a bottle of sleeping pills in her hand and a picture of her dead husband in the other. As she contemplated taking her life, her deep despair lifted and she felt a calm and loving presence sweep over her. “You are loved, you are needed. Lift yourself up off your bed and share yourself with the Universe” came a voice from somewhere. She just could not tell where.

She put the picture down, and as she did she knocked over a small vase. The single rose it carried fell to the floor. As she picked it up, she remembered the time when her husband had given it to her just a few days before his accident. She held it for a moment, and then placed it down next to the picture of him. Both the picture and the rose would make it inside her husband’s coffin later that day.

Back in the present moment, the woman stared straight ahead at the empty altar at the front of the church as the man continued.

“Do not let my appearance make you forget who I am. Do not see my clothing as a sign of anything. Do not judge me for what I wear or how I appear, but for who I am. I saved you for this purpose.

Rather, see those who taught you to judge as in need of your Love. Those who see wrinkled clothing as a testament to truth need to see the reality of their condition. Those who taught you that the veils mattered more than the core are in need of forgiveness.”

The woman remembered the feeling and the tears that flowed when she left the room and saw her children. She cried openly then as they hugged her and told her how much they loved her. Yes, Love. It saw her through her suffering.

“Yes,” said the man. “That’s what you need to share. That’s the feeling that matters most. You can now leave this building, for you have found God’s house. It is where that feeling resides.”

Tears flowed down the woman’s face as she slowly turned to see the man. As her eyes made their way to the spot where he had taken his seat just moments ago she saw that no one was there. The seat was empty save a single rose laying alone on the wood.

Miracles happen daily. Some we see and most we don’t. Embrace Love, it’s the only miracle you’ll need.

∞

Tearing Down the Walls

August 20, 2012 / Tom

∏

Today, this moment, this second, this place in time. Whatever. I feel a disconnect in my soul, and separation from the force that creates within me. It’s not a block it seems, it is more like when two of north poles of a magnet are led toward each other. They are led, they may even connect, but the natural course of things forces them apart. It is not either magnet’s fault. There is no wrong here, the connection simply is not natural and, therefore, cannot last very long. At least that is how it feels right now. It’s like I reach out to my creative force and as I get close some force directs me in an opposite direction.

So that’s it is within me right now. I settled down at the appointed hour to practice the craft I love so much. I want to write, to share the art within me and to make something out of this passion. I closed my eyes as is customary, seeking a connection with the inner force that creates within me. I am not an artist, I channel the Artist within me. What you see is not my work, it is My work. What you interpret and define my creation as is your work.

Today, I can’t seem to find my Artist. Perhaps it is the stress of preparing for another move. Perhaps it is financial stress. Perhaps it is the uncertainty of where I am. Maybe it simply is that I am failing to recognize something far greater than what I think. Maybe I’ve found the diamond but only see it as a lump of coal? Maybe I have found what I have always been looking for and I simply need to open my damned eyes and see it.

So, I open my eyes. Same old, same old. The laptop glares at me. The mess and chaos around me stir up the pot and I feel like I should be packing and not working or writing. I look at the clock, only about 20 minutes left in my lunch before I get back to selling something for someone else. I’ve spent 10 minutes complaining about how little creativity I have today and zero time actually creating. What the fuck is up with me? I laugh at the question.

My phone rings in a text from a rather awesome friend. “What to you like to cook?” I take time to answer. I like simple stuff because that’s what I’m good at when cooking. Make it science and my experiment will explode. Make it simple and you’ll like what you are eating. I smile, knowing that this friend is an artist and most likely will understand this post. I know she will put my craziness in its place and explain to me what the fuck is up with me. She’s undoubtedly been there, and at the end of that conversation we’ll both find something to laugh at in the mix of our humanity.

Again I stare at the chaos around me. The silence smacks me in the face as if to remind me that the chaos stems from it. Ok, fine Universe, I remember the lesson. There is order in this mess, silence in the noise, light in the darkness. Somewhere…find it, search for it, and it will come. Or not. Whatever you decide it will be the experience you are after. You want stress, you got it. You want peace, you got that too. You want war, you will find it. You want to be tested by trust and faith well guess what, you’ll find a test coming in short order.

I sigh. I have to find something to create. This lack of creativity is killing me. I mean it is rare that I just can’t sit down and create something “magical” that brings bumps to my skin. My erotic Self is left basting in a cauldron of apathy and disappointment. My romantic self seems to have been packed in a box somewhere. Jesus, I hope I find it when I unpack. I can’t see a box labeled “romance” or “erotica” anywhere. Damn it, I mislabeled it or, worse, misplaced it! I laugh at the idea as I wonder if I will ever be able to get back in my swing of things.

Well duh, of course I will. Too much travel for work, too many nights in hotel rooms and too little time with those I adore spending time with. I’m not just talking about the kids, I need them around and they just left me. I’m talking about adult friends who understand what it is to be an Artist with a blank canvas staring them in the face. Friends who know what it is like to have to deal with the issues of stress. Those who understand the fickleness of other adults who lose their way from time to time. Ah yes, a warm embrace, a handshake, and pat on the ass and then…

My head shakes me back to real time. I feel my insides being tickled and I laugh uncontrollably. “You moron,” shouts my Artist within, “look at what you’ve created in your non-creative state. Keep being this blocked and you must may win the Nobel Prize one day.”

Hardee har hardy har har. The Nobel Prize? Nice carrot but you forgot the stick Mr. Artist.

“No I haven’t. I’m about to hit you in the ass with it.”

Ouch. I get it. Stop looking at the chaos that only exists in my mind and start enjoying it. Stop worrying about if people are happy around you and just start being who you are. That will make those who matter in the Universal concept very happy and like butterflies they will fill your world with color.. Those who aren’t, well they will fly away like the mosquito you swatted away earlier this morning. The butterflies light up the landscape and fill you with life. The mosquitoes only bite and make you itch for some time after they leave. The mosquito bites remind you of a time when your skin wasn’t itchy, red and swollen. Your bliss. Your butterfly tree.

Now the Artist is laughing hysterically, clearly mocking me in my time of trial. Honestly, I start to laugh too. If anyone saw me they would think I am crazy but that’s only because they can’t hear the joke and I’m not sure many would get it if they could. Still, it is funny to me.

“Who built these walls?” asks the Artist in a manner one could find from the old, blind master in the Show Kung Fu I loved as a kid.

“I did” came my feeble reply. I know what is coming, so I grab my hammer in anticipation. No answer. Nothing. Only silence, not even a laugh.

“Come on, what the fuck,” I shout internally as to not alarm the neighbors to my conversation. I can hear the paddy wagon pulling up shortly thereafter and the rubber room door closing behind me.

“Just playing with you. Seriously, I thought you were going to hit me with the hammer young grasshopper.”

“The thought had crossed my mind, but that wasn’t my objective honestly.”

“Then what was?” asked my supposed tormentor and current Master.

I thought for a minute. I could have either chosen to build more walls or…

“I wanted to tear down the walls keeping me from you.”

More silence. I look at the clock and realize I have to get back to work. More walls. Same walls, whatever. I look at the stuff I need to do around me. Yep, walls galore. There’s nothing like looking at a beautiful rose and realizing that it is what you see that keeps you from it. It is also what you fail to see which, for most of us, is that we have already created a wall from the beauty without even realizing it.

Ok, fine. I get it. What you are reading people is my hammer, and it will tear down the walls. Actually, it already is.

Peace.

∞

The Parable of the Moving Ball

August 11, 2011 / tomgrasso

“There is no way to be truly great in this world. We are all impaled on the crook of conditioning. “ ~James Dean

There’s a certain magic in that quote. It tells an entire story in two sentences. Even those few we cherish as “great” are only so because we allow a certain perspective to dictate to us who and what they are. Change your perspective and they cease to become “great”. George Washington and Gandhi were not “great” people to the British of their time. Mother Theresa was not “great” to the starving hordes in Northern Africa. Jesus was not “great” to the Sanhedrin or the Romans. Republicans are not great to Democrats and vice versa. It simply is a matter of how you choose to see something.

I often use the Hawking example of the “ping pong ball on a train” applied to my spiritual practice to understand perspective (a view by which we cast all judgment) so that I can extrapolate the effects of perspective, conditioning and attachment on our reality. Here’s

My Sacral Chakra Ball...(Source: http://www.assistedseniorliving.net/)

this analogy in all of its glory:

There is a ping pong ball sitting on a table on a train in a way that causes it to sit perfectly still. The train, however, is moving at 65 miles per hour.

To some people conditioned to be ON the train, the ball is not moving, never moves, and remains perfectly still.

To others conditioned to be on the side of the tracks, the ball is moving at 65 mph as it whizzes by.

Each has its own perspective because of its own conditioning. The ball is still a ball, but when we add ideas of conditioning to it we create a “moving ball” or a “ball sitting still”. If each is unwilling to waver from its perspective we have the conditions for war, violence or, at the very least, anger and fear.

Yet, each is right in their observation. Where they make a fundamental mistake is when they attach themselves to their idea of what they see or have learned and not what is REAL. The reality of this example is that there is a ball and an Observer, plain and simple. If they could agree that there is a ball then the BELIEF about the ball becomes MEANINGLESS! After all, all one has to do to change the way you see the ball is to change the view. (Change the world by changing the way you see the world.)

They would not have to add phrases from a book (in this case any religious text) that

Who is doing wrong here in the picture and why?

proves they are right and the other is wrong. They would not have to create “wickedness” in others who see things differently. They could simply “allow” the description by simply not needing one in the first place. (Those who know do not speak and those who speak do not know.)

In this analogy, no one has actually seen the ball. These people have READ about the ball and what it is doing. For the purposes of this post, the book says that the ball is moving.

Now because these people (we will call them Xtians) have never seen the ball but only have a book to rely on describing what the ball is doing (or was doing), they have created “faith” to ensure that the countless generations of conditioning that taught about the moving ball remains intact. They can’t prove the ball is moving, or that the ball even exists, yet this faith allows them to not only believe in the ball and what it is doing, but also condemn those who either don’t believe in the ball’s existence or have different conditioned ideas about what the ball is (or was) doing. After all, their parents taught them it was moving because they themselves were handed down the countless generations of conditioning that have gone into creating this “faith”.

In this example, the Xtians not only have created an idea of right and wrong, but are using someone else’s idea to do so. They are taking someone else’s experience or inspiration and making it necessary for everyone to have it. It isn’t real, it’s an imagined idea of an experience someone else had thousands of years earlier MADE real in order to support their own conditioned thoughts.

They could point to verses in that book that allowed for the conclusion that “I am right, you are wrong, the ball is moving,” and “I will be saved and you won’t be because I believe the ball is moving”. I mean something supreme told them that the ball was moving (or is), right? The book said that anyone who said the ball was still was a false prophet!!! BEWARE but remain hopeful because a savior is coming to prove to everyone that the ball was, in fact, MOVING.

The faith in the book itself would keep you from experiencing the TRUTH about the ball. You would not be able to experience the ball as still because, frankly, you could not get out of your box long enough to have the experience. So, you could not say for sure if the ball was moving or not, you’d just have to have faith that it was. Experience would be secondary to the conditioning and the belief in you it created.

Silly, huh? When you achieve a level of consciousness that allows you to experience the ball as moving and still, either idea becomes equally meaningless and equally valid. Ultimately though, it is not as important as the experience itself. You die when you stop having the experience of existing, and strict adherence to any religion, dogma or belief (religious or otherwise) is a death experienced by those who have forgotten their own breath. Once we start honoring experience as the basis for our purpose, we not only live for the experience but also find a deep desire to let go or it in order to see the sunrise as if for the very first time. Experience is dynamic and ever-changing, religion is not.

The New Experience of Religion (Source: http://www.canyonridge.org)

There is MUCH value in religion. It removes people from horrible darkness and debilitating despair as well as providing the impetus for humans to come to a deeper understanding of who we are. However, religion seems to be the “puberty of spirituality”, that stage of development that allows us to learn about ourselves in tremendously unique ways while still only being one stage of many. Unfortunately, it has been our history that we stop developing at this pubescent stage. We find comfort in religion, particularly if our parents are the ones who indoctrinated us into it or if it has pulled us out of some deep abyss, and remain in this stage rather than mature beyond it.

Religion is nothing more than an experience. You have it, and then you should let it go. Or else you begin to have the experience of stagnation as you live like a veal-calf in a box. You soon forget how to walk, and become so soft as to be desired by wolves. It would be like finding comfort on the seat of a roller coaster and never getting off to experience the rest of the rides.

Now, before you decide that I am judging religion while demonizing judgment let me just suggest to you that I am offering a unique way to describe my experience of religion not only from the inside looking out but from the outside looking in. I am not JUDGING, I am DESCRIBING. I am describing the ball while I was standing by the tracks and now as I stand on the train. I am not saying I am right to you, I am simply describing what I have experienced which, of course, makes me right to me.

In my experience, religion gave me a grounded understanding of my society’s morality, or at least a rosy picture of it. It also seemed to create a lot of society’s inner turmoil. Because of that, it remained for me just a step toward higher levels of consciousness. There was no comfort in the religious stage, only questions that would force me upward and beyond the confines of a book that taught me that ball was moving. I needed to experience it, to know it, to feel it and to understand it and then fortunate was able to let it go. In doing so, I stepped out of its confines into an experience that hasn’t stopped pushing me into deeper and more meaningful levels of understanding. Religion was a gift for me, it got me to a point where I wanted something it could not offer. It has also been a curse because it has cost me friendships and countless hours of guilt and fear as I began growing away from it.

So when someone says to me “you are wrong, the ball is moving” while unfriending me on Facebook because of what I see (or how I describe what I see), I can simply say “yeah, I saw that once too and this is what I saw once I stepped onto the train.” I now focus only on the ball, and keep my “eyes” firmly fixed on it as I let go of all the ideas I have created about what it is, what it does and how it does it. I simply experience the entirety of the ball, and have found something very powerful in this focus.

The ball does not exist. But that’s for another story…

The Debt Ceiling Crisis – A Lesson In Spirituality

July 29, 2011 / tomgrasso

While others are digging in to the ideological positions I have been simply watching. While some are calling each other names and suggesting that the “sky is falling” I have been stuck in observation mode simply taking it all in.

Now that ends. I have seen enough.

I am left rather exasperated by the shear infantile behavior of our political leaders and pundits stuck in their ideological camps. The are rolling around in their ideas of what is “right” like swine rolling around the mud in their pigsties. It’s like watching elementary school bullies pick on each other until one goes home crying. It simply is insanity at its worst.

For instance, allow me to paraphrase a conversation recently overheard on Capitol Hill:

The Hobbit (Source http://www.shockya.com)

Sen. McCain: “Tea Party members are like hobbits.”

Congressman Rand Paul: “Oh yeah, but you’re a troll.”

Sen. McCain: “This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees.”

Um, excuse me kids, but don’t you have a job to do? While I may agree with McCain, wasn’t he the one who gave us all Sarah Palin? I mean isn’t there something I heard once about those in glass houses throwing stones? You betcha!

Now I don’t want to belabor the points that ideologues have presented countless times already on the issue. Between the endless news stories, tweets, Facebook updates, and forum posts I have read it is very clear to me. The points everyone is raising aren’t the cure, they are part of the problem here. Things like the debt crisis are not problems, they are a symptom of a much larger disease.

The Diagnosis

“Calling Dr. Moe, Dr. Larry, Dr. Shemp” (Source Amazon.com)

We are infected hopelessly in a condition I term “human stupidioitis”. When I first used that term, I realized that I was saying “human stupid-eee-oh-itis”, but now realize that I was missing a consonant there. It should be “human stupid-idiot-itis” since that’s exactly what it is. We have become a species so addicted to our own ideas that we have redefined the entirety of the universe according to the ideas we have created of what it is. We have created God into an image of man, we have created pollution as “good”, we have created social responsibility as “redistribution of wealth” and we have created greed as a “gauge of success” (just to name a few).

I will leave it “human stupid-eee-oh-itis” for now. It just sounds so much more “medical” since it is nearly impossible to spell and to say correctly.

What is This Condition?

Modern man became what he thinks he is (notice the italics) today largely because of his frontal lobe (sorry opposable thumbs, but you aren’t the main reason we dominate the Earth). Our frontal lobes have allowed us to do all kinds of things, from pondering “what am I?” to finding cures for medical conditions to finally realizing that there is no money in a cure while riches await in the treatment. Our frontal lobes have created not only our abilities to save each other, but to kill each other. Yes, our frontal lobes have helped us truly understand what we think we are, and have given us ideas not only on who we are

Now, where did I leave my wallet?

but also on who everyone else should be.

Therein lies the root of the disease. The frontal lobe, to me, is an “idea creator”. I bet we didn’t have one when residing in Eden. In fact, we were so “idea-less” that it took a snake to have one for us and once Adam and Eve ate of the apple “wham-oh!!” there it was. It seems our first idea, if you believe the story of Genesis, was that our genitals were horrible and needed to be covered. So we covered them. It’s been all downhill from there.

In fact, I believe that if we all took off our clothes right now we would all be back in Eden. Just kidding…

I was recently asked what I believed the crux of the Bible was. I stated that when I shed all ideas that were given to me by my family, friends, acquaintances, clergy, teachers, and books I was left with only one idea that made sense to me.

“The entire Bible has only one moral, and that is that human ideas are harmful while acceptance to what is brings to you to God.”

I was thoroughly ridiculed on that one. I had made the statement to a group of Christians on an internet forum I frequent. It was probably the wrong group to suggest that the Bible was not anything other than pure, unadulterated fact. It turned out to be yet another idea that just smacked me in the face.

When you look at each and every event composing the debt crisis, it seems to mirror every other human crisis in history. When you look at it simply and without your own ideas you are left with one incontestable truth. We suffer from a disease of the mind and ideas are its tumors. Tumors that the mind has become reliant on not only for a sense of identity but also for the creation of what is commonly called “truth”. This truth, however, lacks any sense of the present moment. It only knows the present through the past. In this state of the disease, the present simply cannot exist without the past and therefore cannot stand on its own. Oddly enough, this condition is not dependent on the individual’s past for life, it also uses the past of everyone else. We call this condition, ironically enough, “conditioning”.

The Cure

I’d love to tell the world what the cure is. However, I have learned from my friends in the pharmaceutical world that there is no money in the cure, only in the treatment. In addition, I obviously have no idea how to cure the pain of ideas. So allow me to render you a treatment and hope that you will pay me for it. (Yes, I am laughing, and hope you are too. If not, email me and I will send you a Paypal link.)

Allow me to admit that I realize how idiotic I must sound here. First, I am presenting an idea (or several) about how harmful ideas are. Second, I am suggesting that I have no cure, but can provide a treatment. I have not evolved spiritually enough to follow the wise words of the Tao: “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” Understandably I am torn on the prognosis as well as my inability to shut up about the disease.

Treatment #1 – Suffering

Most of us avoid suffering like the plague. Well, we think we do anyway. In fact, most of us are the creators of the conditions that create suffering even as we do our best to avoid the suffering itself. We simply ask for it and then feign ignorance when it falls on us like a brick.

In the case of our debt crisis, we have overspent our revenues for at least the last 10 years. We have ASKED for the debt crisis, and then act not only surprised that we have one but amazed at the consequences. Now, while most of us want to blame our political leaders, I don’t. I blame ME. Why? Well, I am part of the citizenry that has elected those bozos. They are in place with their ideas and tactics because I have put them there (“I” is collective here).

We have overspent our revenue. We have asked for debt under the incorrect assumption that governments MUST operate in the red. Both political parties (ideas) have done had their hand in this cookie jar, and neither seems to willing to end the insanity. They are, however, all too willing to end the other guy’s insanity. The easier of the two, healing thyself, is avoided in favor of the more difficult healing of thy neighbor. It’s a worldwide problem, and not one I can see as easily cured without the complete and utter collapse of governments, economies and cultures.

This will create suffering because of our unobstructed attachment to all human ideas. The suffering will lead to an understanding that allows Treatment #2 to be successful.

Treatment #2 – Removal of the Tumors

Meditation – The Surgery

If the mind is the patient, and ideas are the tumors, then meditation is the surgery necessary to separate the tumors from the patient. Ideas themselves will always be a part of the human mind much like pathogens are always part of the human body, but when we become unattached to those ideas we become free from the disease. It’s not that the tumors themselves won’t be floating around in our minds, it’s just that we won’t let them take hold and we won’t allow our minds to feed off them. They will vanish and have little effect on our present moments.

The treatments themselves are quite successful, at least they have been for me. Even the ideas I present here are not firmly fixed in my thoughts, they are experiences. Sharing experiences will always have much more truth for me than the sharing of ideas will. The more present the experience is the more truth I find in it. Because I can let go of this idea at any time experience provides me with a different one, I am not rooted in that idea and therefore am not “sick” with it. I can let it go at any time, or not depending on the experience of the present moment.

Prognosis

The doctor states that the patient is critical but that there are glimmers of hope. The world’s consciousness is shifting, and the collective enlightenment is near. When I was a young boy, I would often see the Urban Jesus (my name for him) with a sign that said “Repent, the End is Near”. An idea evolved within me that suggested that “repentance is the end”. Then I learned that “repentance” involves guilt, shame, remorse” and all kinds of things that made (and make) little sense to me spiritually, so I dove into the idea of repentance as it relates to my human experience. Now, through my experience, I realize that repentance is the Treatment #1 raised above, with forgiveness being Treatment #2. It has been my experience that you will not heal without first being injured and then forgiving the injury. Repentance is the suffering necessary to recognize the tumor, and forgiveness is the surgery that removes it. You cannot truly heal without going through both treatments.

So, we will eventually suffer for our “human stupidioitis” so that we can recognize the tumors. We will then have to forgive ourselves and heal. Perhaps the suffering will create an immunity to the disease, but so far that hasn’t been the case. I keep hoping that this will be the fever that gets us to the cure, but realize that we are so busy treating the symptom that the cause just keeps festering within us.

The good news here is that you can self-medicate and be cured.